Counting of Muslim students in Toulouse: the Interior admits having wanted to calculate the “absenteeism rate”, but denies the “religious file”

By the voice of a press release, the Ministry of the Interior acknowledged, this Sunday, May 21, having ordered the police to identify in Toulouse, but also in other academies, the students absent for the day of the Eid al-Fitr which marks the end of Ramadan. “The Ministry of the Interior and Overseas regularly studies the impact of certain religious holidays on the functioning of public services, and in particular within the school sphere. It is in this context that an evaluation of the rate of Absenteeism noted on the occasion of the Aid-el-Fitr feast, on April 21, could be requested, in certain academies, from the heads of establishment.

“What were they looking for?”

After the revelations of La Dépêche du Midi, voices began to rise to denounce this action. The former first secretary of the PS, Jean-Christophe Cambadélis, asked this Sunday that Gérald Darmanin “shed light” on this affair. “It’s nonsense there frankly. We are in an incredible situation”, said on Radio J the former socialist deputy. “What led to the police deciding to contact the heads of (school) establishments to find out the rate of absenteeism? What were they looking for? ‘you have to know,’ he added, referring to ‘probably’ discrimination.

If we recognize having given the order to evaluate the “absenteeism rate”, on the side of Place Beauveau, we refute the accusations of “religious filing”: “Contrary to what has been said in recent days , the Ministry of the Interior and Overseas obviously does not practice any registration of students according to their confession: no nominative data has been neither requested nor recorded at any time”, assures the Interior.